Pioneer Photography in Bolivia

holds images of his work in northern Argentina. Alphons Stübel and Wilhelm Reiss purchased some of his prints during their expedition. See Paulo Cesar de Azevedo and Mauricio Lissovsky's Escravos Brasileiros do Século XIX na Fotografia de Christiano Jr. (1988), and Abel Alexander, "El gran fotógrafo Christiano Junior en Mendoza," Congreso de Historia de la Fotografía, vol. II, 1993.

Church, George Earl (1835-1910). An American engineer who became a journalist, explorer, and railroad entrepreneur, Church was surveying railroads in the United States before he was twenty-one and exploring Argentine Patagonia at twenty-two. His engineering career was interrupted the American Civil War, in which he served as an officer with the Seventh Rhode Island Infantry. Between the late 1860s and the mid-1870s, he was periodically in Bolivia at its government's invitation, promoting railway enterprises--most importantly the Mamoré and Madeira Railroad Company. He collected photographs and possibly was himself a photographer during this period. Books, maps, and papers from Church's personal library, including Views of Bolivia, an album of ten ca. 1869-1870 albumen prints, presumably gathered during his Bolivian travels, are in the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Church was also a vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society. See "North American Captains of Industry in Latin America: Col. George Earl Church," Bulletin of the International Bureau of the American Republics (March 1909), and Lewis Hanke, "A Note on the Life and Publications of Colonel George Earl Church," Books at Brown (vol. XX, 1976). Church's study, Aborigines of South America, edited by his friend Clements R. Markham, was published posthumously in 1912.

Clavijo Fotógrafo. The imprint "Clavijo Fotógrafo" appears on a ca. 1867 carte de visite of a Bolivian subject. The photographer may have been Cipriano Clavijo, who worked in Chile and Peru from 1855 through the 1880s. There was also a photographer named Clavijo active in Bolivia in the 1920s.

Conway, Martin (1856-1937). Conway was an English mountaineer, writer, and art connoisseur who climbed in the Bolivian Cordillera Real in 1898 and 1900, and made the first ascent of Illimani's south peak. See his Bolivian Andes: A Record of Climbing & Exploration in the Cordillera Real in the Years 1898 and 1900 (1901), illustrated with more than eighty photographs.

Cordero Castillo, Julio (1879-1961). Cordero was a noted photographer active in La Paz from 1898 to 1940. Born in Pucarani, Cordero came to La Paz at the turn of the century to seek his fortune. He learned photography from the Valdez Hermanos. His two sons, Julio P. Cordero Ordoñez (d. 1963) and Gregorio Cordero Miranda (d. 1979?) operated the family studio after his retirement. Cordero's first studio was at Calle Ayacucho 74, and he later relocated to Calle Comercio 160. Viscarra's 1918 Guía General de Bolivia carries this advertisement: "Importación directa de Europa y Estados Unidos de Norte América, Establecimiento de Fotografía y Cine-Fotografía de Primer Orden de Julio Cordero, La Paz, Grandes premios de Sucre, La Paz y Potosí, Trabajos de arte, ampliaciones, reproducciones, etc., Venta de artículos fotográficos, Vistas fotográficas y tarjetas postales de Bolivia, Se atiende pedidos de cualquier punto de la Republica." Julio Cordero Benavídez, nephew of the progenitor, today guards a family archive of some fifty-thousand images. See Rolando Costa Ardúz's La Paz: sus rostros en el tiempo (1973), 14